Building a Curriculum for a Culture of Peace - Part III

Judah the Macabee and the Macabee of the Muslim Ummah – Al Ghazali: Resisting the Inappropriate Intrusions of Greek Thought into Abrahamic Concepts of Holiness

By Rebecca Abrahamson

Part of building a Curriculum for a Culture of Peace is an exploration of Abrahamic concepts of uniqueness, separateness and holiness as opposed to the melting-pot construct that would erase our divinely-ordained differences. Efforts have been made in the name of equality to take “all men are created equal” a step further and declare its equivalence to “all people are the same”. Efforts to erase differences take away from the rich variety of divine and human expression, a variety that motivates us to be challenged and thus grow is ways we could not if we felt that we were all essentially interchangeable.

As the holiday of Hanuka is upon us, an extra-biblical holiday which marks the children of Israel’s break with the intrusion of Greek thought into Abrahamic concepts of holiness, I thought I would present a parallel between our peoples – Abrahamic resistance to Greek concepts of sameness during the second century BCE, which resulted in the Hanuka miracle that we commemorate, and the 11^th century CE Islamic philosopher Al Ghazali with his philosophical sturdiness in the face of an intrusion of Greek thought that could have spelled the end of Islam itself.

Deliverance takes many forms, sometimes it is physical deliverance: the holiday of Purim celebrates the children of Israel’s deliverance from the wicked Haman’s decree of annihilation.

Other times, we are delivered spiritually: the holiday of Hanuka celebrates reclaiming Solomon’s Temple from Greek rule. The Temple is a spiritual vessel, and the Temple service needs to be performed with integrity, adherence to scripture and tradition, and in a spirit of humility and awe. In short, it is above time and place, not subject to the whims and imposition of a ruler of flesh and blood.

The Greek Seleucid rulers wished to influence the Temple service, second century, BCE. Antiochus IV ordered placing a statue of Zeus in the Temple, sacrificing a pig on the altar, opening the flasks of Temple oil, and destroying the separate gates that were specific to each of the twelve tribes.

This provoked a revolt led by Mattisyahu the High Priest and his sons, one of them the notable Judah, who became known as Judah the Maccabee; Maccabee may stand for, “Who is like you among the gods, oh Lord!”

The Temple was recaptured in 165 BCE. The children of Israel wished to re-dedicate it by lighting the seven-branched Menora. The Greek army had opened the flasks of olive oil that were stored in the Temple with an aim to desecrate, rendering the oil unfit for use. The children of Israel managed to find one flask of unopened oil, enough for one day, yet it miraculously burned for eight days, enough time to make new kosher oil that could be used in the Temple.

What we celebrate today is not the military victory, but the miracle that the oil which was enough for one day lasted eight. The emphasis is on the spiritual victory, on soul over matter, on spirit over might.

Greek influence seeks to control by rendering everyone the same. Greek thought as imposed on the children of Israel meant destroying our differences – they objected to the concept of sacred and separate oil, and separate gates that led into the Temple for each tribe. These subtle erosions of our identity were not as obvious as the offenses of erecting a statue and ordering the sacrifice of pig, yet they were more insidious and therefore dangerous.

Twelve centuries later, Persia would find itself host to an intellectual giant who paved the way for intra-Islamic tolerance and a defeat of the inroads into Islam of key points in Greek philosophy. Al-Ghazali , 11th century Persia, was given the honorific title “Proof of Islam” (Hujjat al-Islam); his work successfully changed the course of Islamic philosophy.

Neo-Platonism had been making inroads into Islamic thought, al-Ghazali refuted key philosophical points not with theology, but with reason. His counter arguments were so successful that neo-Platonism and Aristotelian philosophy never recovered its place in Islam. His work paved the way for acceptance of various streams of Islamic thought, giving an intellectual framework for orthodox Islam to appreciate Sufiism. Here we have real tolerance, the tolerance of truly accepting the Other within various orthodox streams.

Al-Ghazali confronted three major points: resurrection, was the universe created or did it always exist, and God’s involvement in the particulars of creation. He argued that the same Creator who formed humans from nothing could certainly re-create from deceased bodies. Everything that exists has a cause, and thus a starting point, i.e. there needed to be a starting pint in creation. Regarding God’s constant involvement , he gave the following example: when fire burns cotton, the fire does not cause the burning, the two events occur side-by-side due to God’s constant intervention, this means that nothing transpires outside God’s constant involvement.

Al Ghazali refuted philosophy with its own logic, allowing Abrahamic religions to flourish unhindered by philosophical skepticism, twelve centuries after the Chanuka miracle, we have the Maccabee of the Muslim ummah!

It is no coincidence that both Judaism and Islam boast leaders who questioned inappropriate intrusions of Greek thought. Tolerance of variety springs from Abrahamic religions, and is antithetical to that part of western thought that declares that equality must mean sameness.

We need our uniqueness in a national and tribal sense in order to uphold our covenants. We also need uniqueness in gender, so that man and woman can feel needed and complementary to each other.

So Happy Chanukah, and remember Al Ghazali of blessed memory, the Macabee of the Muslim ummah!